by Jane Heller
Sob sob sob.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said. “Want some water?”
As he started for the kitchen, I mumbled, “I’ve cried enough water to fill your sink.”
“Okay. No water.” He sat beside me, waiting for me to come up for air. “I knew you were upset about Buster, but I didn’t realize how upset. Leah agrees with Patrick about the treatment plan, by the way. She’s been keeping a close eye on our Busty. He’s very comfortable around her.”
Sob sob sob.
“Mel, I’m worried about you,” he said. “You’ve never been a crier. Where’s the tough cookie I know so well?”
“Melted!” I picked up my head. Suddenly, I didn’t care if he saw my swollen eyes and swollen nose and swollen lips. What difference did any of it make?
“What do you mean?” he said, looking bewildered.
“I’ve turned into this pathetic tear factory because you’re marrying Leah.” There. I said it.
“Come on,” he said with a chuckle, as if he didn’t understand that I was serious. “That doesn’t make sense. Now you’re off the hook for the alimony. You should be celebrating.”
“I don’t care about the alimony. I just want you.”
“Me?” He stared at me, stunned. “Since when?”
“Since…since …you became the man I always hoped you’d become.”
“Aw, now you’re yanking my chain. You just need to calm down.” He resumed the rubbing of my back.
“It’s true, Dan. You’re taking charge of your life and acting responsibly and proving that I was wrong to leave you, leave our marriage. I love you. I never stopped loving you, even though I said horrible, nasty things to you and you said horrible, nasty things to me. I want us to get back together.”
Finally realizing that I meant what I was saying, he took his hand off my back, this time as if he was afraid he might have caught something by touching me. He looked that unnerved.
Sob sob sob.
He rose from the sofa and started pacing. “I didn’t see this coming at all,” he said.
“Neither did I,” I said. “But the feelings are there, and I can’t hold them in. I’m not trying to ruin your happiness, I swear I’m not. I just had to tell you. In case there’s any chance you have feelings for me too.”
He stopped pacing and stood there staring at me again. “But I love Leah.”
“Do you?” I asked.
“And she loves me,” he said instead of giving me a direct answer. “I’ll always care about you, Mel. I told you that at Patrick’s office. But getting back together?” He tugged on his earlobe, a sure sign that he was out of sorts, and returned to his pacing. I had clearly shaken him up. “When we split, you kept telling me there was no way you’d come back. And it wasn’t like I didn’t ask. And ask. Eventually, I believed you and stopped asking. And now this?”
“Okay, so my timing isn’t the greatest. But what should I have done? Not come to you? Watch you marry Leah without ever letting you know what’s in my heart?”
“Maybe.”
“Why? Because you’re having doubts about her?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“The person I’m having doubts about is you. If we got back together, what would be different? Yeah, I’d have a job, but you’d still be married to yours. I’d never see you.”
“Bernie fired me. I’m not a VP at Pierce, Shelley anymore. He couldn’t get past the fact that I was too busy moping around about you to concentrate on my clients.”
“Oh, jeez. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ll find another job, and when I do I won’t make it my life. I’m not as obsessed about security anymore. My security is in here now.” I tapped on my chest, just the way Evan did when he had tried to make the same point to me.
Dan shook his head, confounded. “So you’re gonna stop and smell the roses, is that it?”
“That’s it. Overdue, but true. I just want to smell the roses with you, Dan. Please say you want that too?”
“I still don’t get this. First, I was on your shit list. Now, I’m your candidate for man of the year?”
“I know it sounds unbelievable, but things change. People change.”
Suddenly, his expression darkened and his eyes blazed. “I can’t listen to this. I really can’t. I love Leah and we’re getting married next month and I think you should go.”
He was angry—not the reaction I was expecting at all. I had anticipated that he would be surprised, flattered, and steadfast in his loyalty to Leah, but not angry.
“You want me to leave?”
“Yeah. You know why? Because you are yanking my chain and I’m tired of it.”
My tears stopped immediately. I’m telling you, if you scare them, they’ll scoot right back up where they came from.
“I never meant to do that,” I said.
It occurred to me that if he thought I’d yanked his chain now, what would he think if he found out I’d hired a professional matchmaker and fixed him up with Leah? Well, that wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen.
“Just go,” he said. “Please.”
“I’m going. I’m going.” I went to kiss Buster good-bye, then gave Dan one last, longing look. It was inconceivable to me that we were really finished. But he had made it plain that he wanted no part of me.
“In some ways, it feels as if we’ve switched places,” I said. “You’re the one with the job and the bright future, while I’m the one who’s vulnerable and alone.” I moved toward the door. “But you know what? It’s not a bad thing to be in your shoes. I have insight into what you must have gone through when we were together. I understand now what it’s like to lose everything.”
While he watched silently—jaw set, lips pursed, the picture of a man who was struggling to rein in his emotions—I opened the door, walked out, and closed it behind me.
Chapter
26
I stopped at Mrs. Thornberg’s instead of going straight home. She took one look at the sad, bedraggled spectacle I was and opened her arms to me. I rushed at her and let her hold me. Her bones were so frail I was afraid I’d break them.
“I know,” she said as she rocked me. Her breath smelled of dill pickles, which, together with the odor of mothballs in the apartment, made for a pretty rank combination, but I cared more about the affection she was showing me. Never had I needed it so much. “He’s marrying the dope fiend and you’re worried how your poor little doggie will take it?”
“No. That’s not it,” I said. “That’s never been it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You always say I’m a good girl, but I’ve been a bad, bad girl.” There was something about my odd, yet habit-forming relationship with Antoinette Thornberg—about the fact that she kept reaching out to me and I kept being there for her and the whole thing made me feel better about myself—that allowed me to tell her my story.
Yes, I confessed it all, including the part about using her to spy on Dan and Leah, and when I was done she sat quietly for several minutes before saying, “I’ve got turkey from the deli. I could make you a sandwich. Mayo. Mustard. Russian dressing. Even sauerkraut.”
I was stunned. Where was the outrage? The scolding? The finger-pointing? Why wasn’t she exploding at me the way she did at her noisy neighbors? Surely, my offenses were more serious than playing loud music after 9 P.M.
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” I said. “I’m more interested in hearing you convince me that I’m not an awful person.”
“Misguided, but not awful,” she said. “I played a trick on Mr. Thornberg and I didn’t beat myself over the head about it.”
“Really? What was the trick?” I said, conjuring up the man with the bad toupee and the defective testicles.
“I sold my clothes so I’d have my own money,” she said, then cackled at the memory. “I’ve given you a hard time about being a career girl, but the truth is I envy you. In my day,
we had to get allowances from our husbands. Since Mr. Thornberg was a tight-wad, I had to be creative about it.”
“What’d you do?” I said.
“Every few months I took my fancy stuff to a high-end consignment shop on Sixty-fifth and Lex,” she said. “They’d sell the clothes, pay me the money, and I’d spend it on whatever I felt like—movies, museums, more clothes, the racetrack.”
“The racetrack?”
“You have a problem with that?”
“No.” I squelched a laugh. “Didn’t Mr. Thornberg ever catch on? He must have wondered what happened to your clothes.”
“Did the football star next door ever notice if you stopped wearing a particular dress?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“There you go. Men never notice those things. They’re too busy noticing our breasts.”
I couldn’t squelch that one. Mrs. Thornberg was as flat-chested as the slices of turkey she had in her refrigerator. “My trick on Dan was worse though, don’t you think?”
“Probably. But look at it this way, dear. You did him a huge favor by introducing him to Leah. If it weren’t for you and this Desiree person, he wouldn’t be walking around with that big smile on his face. When you love someone, it can be enough just to see them happy.”
“Even if it’s not with me?”
“Exactly. You gave him a gift. An anonymous gift. Put it in that context and you’ll be able to dry your tears and get on with your life.”
I stayed with Mrs. Thornberg for a couple of hours, during which she talked and I listened and we ate. Well, I ate and she picked.
I felt better after the visit. As a result of her soothing words, I had vowed to accept the idea that I’d lost Dan, and that I did do him a favor by setting him up with Leah. I was planning to move on. I was.
Over the weekend, I worked on my résumé and cleaned my apartment and, on Sunday, drove up to Connecticut to see Weezie. I threw myself on her mercy and begged her to forgive me and pledged that I would be a more attentive friend. She agreed to give me another chance and conceded that I wasn’t the only one to blame; she hadn’t been forthcoming about her problems with Nards, which had started long before Dr. Corbett complicated her marriage, because she couldn’t bring herself to admit failure. She said that he had seemed restless ever since they’d had their second child. She was convinced that once she’d given up her career to raise their kids, he’d lost interest in her.
“He totally changed,” she said as we sat together on a park bench near her house. Spring was finally around the corner, and it felt good to be outdoors, good to be with her, mostly. “He was the one who wanted a stay-at-home wife, remember?”
“I do, but is it possible that you changed once you did stay home?” I asked. “I mean, did you become more about the kids and less about him? Do you think he misses the part of you that enjoyed making out in hotel restaurants, for example?”
“Oh, now you’re taking his side?”
“No. I’m just trying to see both sides. I never used to do that, Weezie. I never stopped to consider what men want or need or are entitled to. But lately I’ve come to realize that they’re more like us than they are different from us, despite all the Mars-Venus crap. We all want to feel supported, championed, fussed over. We all need to feel sexy and desirable too. And we’re all entitled to be respected for who we are, not how much money we bring home.”
“Nards doesn’t complain about my not bringing money home,” she said. “That’s not the issue.”
“No, but you complain that he’s so busy bringing money home that he’s not helping you with the kids. Maybe you can’t have it both ways. I tried to have it both ways with Dan, and look how that turned out. I wanted him to get out there and find a job, but I was too consumed with my own to understand what he needed from me to bolster his self-confidence. And then along came Leah, who was everything I wasn’t: sweet, encouraging, nurturing, patient. No wonder he fell for her.”
“You were all of those things, Mel. Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I was in the beginning,” I said. “But it’s easy to be encouraging to the golden boy wide receiver of the New York Giants. What was there to nurture?”
We talked and talked and talked, and it was cathartic for both of us. By the time I drove back to the city, she had promised she would get together with Nards and try to find common ground with him. I promised I would stop obsessing about Dan and focus on my future without him.
One of us broke our promise.
I was sitting on my bed on Sunday night, eating a gooey, microwaved Milky Way and studying the New York Times’s classified section, when the doorbell rang, startling me. I checked the clock on the night table. It was ten-fifteen. I wasn’t expecting anybody at that hour obviously.
My first thought was that it must be Patty. Then I remembered she had pretty much abandoned the Heartbreak Hotel and was spending almost every night at her new boyfriend’s place.
And then I thought it might be Evan, who wasn’t leaving for the Bahamas for at least another few days.
I chuckled as I padded to the door, thinking of all the times he’d seen me when I wasn’t exactly looking my best. This time I was wearing grungy sweatpants and an even grungier sweatshirt, and I had creamy nougat all over me. Poor guy.
I peered through the peephole just to make sure it was Evan, not one of America’s Most Wanted, and staggered back when I caught a glimpse of the guy outside my door: Dan.
Great, I thought, frantically licking the candy bar off my fingers. What’s he doing here and why do I have to be dressed like a slob?
I fluffed my hair, pinched my cheeks (actually, I sort of slapped them), and told myself to calm down. He was my ex-husband, for God’s sake. He was marrying a babe in a matter of weeks. What difference did it make how I looked? He had probably only come to berate me for “yanking his chain.”
“Dan,” I said after I opened the door and watched him charge past me into the room. “If you’re here about the other day—”
“Damn right I’m here about the other day,” he said, clearly distressed. “You came over to the apartment and cried your heart out and showed me a side of you that I—” He stopped to collect himself. “That I hadn’t seen in a long time. You were vulnerable, open, honest. No criticizing. No judging. Just loving. All of a sudden, you were my college girl again, the one who used to make me feel like a million bucks. I started reliving how it used to be with us.” He threw his hands up in the air as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Would you listen to me? I’m engaged to Leah. We’re getting married in Minco. This makes no sense.”
I shouldn’t have worried about how I looked. He looked worse. He hadn’t shaved. He had dark circles under his eyes. And his hair—Well, let’s just say I wasn’t the only one who needed a shampoo.
“It makes perfect sense. I reminded you of the girl you loved,” I said, my hopes growing. Was it possible that I hadn’t lost him? That I’d been too hasty in admitting defeat? “The question is: Do you still love her?”
“I never stopped loving her,” he said, planting himself in front of me. “But how am I supposed to know what it all means? How do I tell if these feelings I’m having are real or just leftovers from the past?”
“You’ve got to explore them, Dan. Running from them won’t do any of us any good.”
He took my face in his hands. “Explore them?”
“Yes.”
“Like this?”
He lowered his face tantalizingly close to mine and whispered my name. My immediate thought was: oh my God. I’m not dreaming this. It’s not some lame fantasy. He’s not finished with me any more than I’m finished with him.
“Yes.”
He pressed his lips against mine and kissed me. The kiss began tentatively, even clumsily, as if we were rusty at knowing how to please the very mate with whom we’d once been so intimate. But gradually it built into an embrace that quickened and deepened and propelled us from
our standing position in the middle of the room over to the sofa. When we finally broke apart minutes later, breathless with the unexpectedness of the physical contact, neither of us spoke. We just looked at each other, took a gulp of air, and went back at it. For two solid hours we kissed and groped and humped, fully clothed, like teenagers on a first date. Or, more accurately, like ex-spouses on a reconnaissance mission.
What we discovered during those two hours was that the magic between us was still there. We weren’t wrong about that. Maybe it was the kind of magic that can only ignite between two former lovers, because it feels forbidden and familiar simultaneously, but we were definitely in the throes of it, neither of us wanting or even able to stop.
“This is trouble for me, darlin’,” he murmured at one point. “I’m not some sleazeball who asks women to marry him and then goes out and makes it with his ex-wife.”
“Of course you’re not,” I said, my mouth wonderfully raw. “But let’s take this one step at a time.”
He nodded and took the next step, which was to kiss me again.
Chapter
27
Dan and I didn’t sleep together, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was just a kiss fest at my place that Sunday night. A big, fat, juicy kiss fest. When he finally pulled himself up off the sofa, it was nearly midnight. I asked him if he’d told Leah where he was. He said he’d lied and told her he was out with an old college buddy. I said he hadn’t lied, not entirely, because I was an old college buddy. He said he hated that he’d sneaked out of the apartment to see me. I said he wasn’t a sneak and never had been; that these were extremely trying circumstances and there were no rules for how to handle them. He said he didn’t want to hurt Leah under any circumstances, because he loved her. I said I thought he loved me. He said he did love me. What we had, ladies and gentlemen, was a man in conflict.
He came back Monday morning to bring Buster to me, and the kissing started all over again. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, couldn’t get a sense of perspective. It was just like the old days, when reality was not on our radar. Neither of us had jobs to run off to (well, he had one, but it wasn’t full-time yet), so we tuned the world out and let the Heartbreak Hotel become our hermetically sealed trysting place.